Томас Кенэлли - The Widow and Her Hero

And she replied in her tigress way, Oh, he’s fine when he’s sneaking around and exploding things. It’s just daily life he can’t handle.

And yet, while Rufus picked up the car, she came to Grace and me and said, All right, I’m going, but only for Grace’s sake. And to show you what a lunatic Doucette is.

He’s not a lunatic, I said. He’s been through a lot.

Haven’t we all? Dotty sniffed.

Grace saved me from further arguments by winking at me. The ride south with Rufus – driving through Brighton and Frankston – was very pleasant. Through those suburbs with low-roofed houses behind the dunes and flashes of bright sea seen across vacant plots. At last we got amongst the bush of the peninsula and followed the directions Foxhill had written out for us, from Rosebud on the inner side of Peninsula across red hills to the ocean side. We found the family name on a board hammered to a tree by a stock gate. Beyond the gate a tall timber house with a verandah all around it looked out at the Southern Ocean. Nothing stood between it and the South Pole, and it felt like that. Pleasantly though, not cold but certainly the end of the earth.

We walked up the timber stairs to the house and around the verandah to the front – the sea-facing side. Here there was a slung hammock, and on the verandah boards, an open novel and a bottle of whisky two-thirds gone. Rufus stood by the back door, crying, Boss, are you there? There was no answer, and Grace suggested he might have gone down to the beach. It was a hopeful sort of idea, but I think we could all tell that things were not right.

Rufus said, I’ll just creep in and see if he’s asleep.

We nodded, and Rufus disappeared into the dim house. Grace and I looked out to sea. It was so immense it seemed to promise us settled times. A roar from inside the house took us by shock. A stooped Rufus was retreating to the verandah, his arms spread wide. No, it’s me, it’s Rufus, he was saying. The crazy-eyed Boss, in nothing but shorts and greatly needing a shave, was yelling at him in what must have been Malay and swiping at him with a machete.

Boss, it’s us, I called out, because he didn’t seem to know Rufus.

Have you got malaria? Rufus asked him, but the Boss sliced the air with the machete.

At the end of the Boss’s backswing, Rufus hit him in the face and his legs gave out and he fell sideways onto the verandah boards with his mouth crushed open. I’d never seen him look like this before, and I was shocked by the belt Rufus had given him, and knew I’d have to explain its force to Grace without understanding everything myself about what it meant. Perhaps I could say, Rufus isn’t trained to hit people softly.

In fact Rufus himself seemed appalled to see the Boss flattened like this, looking like a dipso in a gutter.

He said, Let’s put him to bed, Leo. No, better bath him, I think. He doesn’t smell so good.

Does he have malaria? asked Grace. It was obvious she wished we could say yes.

No, muttered Rufus as I helped him lift the Boss. He’s just beyond himself, poor lad.

There was a sour, acrid smell about the Boss as we carried him inside, where thank heavens the girls didn’t follow us. He was not heavy, slight as a kid, really. Such a big personality you forgot he was a squirt. Very sinewy, but very thin legs and arms. If they weren’t so brown, we would have called them Pommy legs.

We ended up in the primitive bathroom of the beach house. Two wobbegong spiders watched us from the ceiling. It was the sort of place the fauna were always going to invade – possums and insects.

Hold him tight, Rufus ordered me as we lowered the Boss to the floor. He’s been on the opium pipe and it always does weird things to him. You’d think it’d make him docile, but he goes haywire.

Well, I thought, opium! Of course. Singapore. These two fellows had a shared history and knew each other well in places where you pick up exotic habits.

While I held on to the Boss, he had a fair bit to say. He said, Come to the wedding, colonel. Come to the wedding you fucking fat bigot! He adopted a pompous voice. Doucette’s done it now. Wants to marry some Belgian tart from Macau!

That fit passed and he yelled over my shoulder at Rufus, Malaria, you say. Good for you, doctor! Malaria! And blood poisoning. Went crazy, took four damned orderlies to hold me down. Remember that one. Four fucking orderlies!

Rufus began to fill the bath with the cold tank water which was all that was available here. He cried out above the noise of the tank water splashing into the zinc bathtub, Yeah. I remember that time, Boss. The tropical ulcer went septic. Lucky you lived, you mad bugger!

The Boss writhed and began crying, and that and the sweaty and shitty stink of him made me feel embarrassed as I held him fast. I was discovering he was more human that I wanted him to be. I hoped I could forget the raving, stinking imbecile he was at the moment. I took comfort from the fact all this didn’t seem to shock or come as a surprise to Rufus.

The Boss began to work his jaw where Rufus had hit him. Well done, old chap! he screamed. But watch out for Round Four. I’ll eat your guts hot.

Okay, Boss, said Rufus, turning the tap off. Are you going to be good for me?

Can you imagine, the Boss asked weeping, they take her blankets away?

No, I think you’re dreaming that, Boss, said Rufus, taking his uniform jacket off and rolling up his sleeves. Grace knocked on the door to tell us she and Dotty had started on the lunch and a clean-up in the kitchen. Are salmon sandwiches okay?

I called out, Yes, and we’ll be out to eat them soon.

Ah, cold blankets, said the Boss as we stripped him off and smelt the full staleness of his opium and whisky sweats and his urine and shit, and lowered him into the water. The cold water did not seem to worry him, but he argued with himself and the Japanese and God and Rufus and me as we washed him down with soft cloths. As he began to cool off and shiver he started abusing Belfast weather, blaming another country for what he was feeling in Australia’s cold tank water.

When the bath was over, we towelled him and dressed him in a fresh singlet and shorts I got from his kit in the melee and fug of the Boss’s bedroom. As he briskly dried the Boss’s under-groin Rufus dared to make a joke about the Boss’s penis, saying, You don’t exactly own a love truncheon, do you, Boss? For such a charmer?

Get fucked yourself, Mortmain. Women don’t want a bloody elephant.

Ah, said Mortmain. It speaks!

In the kitchen, Rufus sat him down and hand-fed him salmon off a spoon, as Grace and Dotty and I looked on, awed and frowning. After getting a little food into him, Rufus and I put him into bed, and then we ate our own sandwiches and drank our tea. Hearing an occasional yell from his bedroom, we knew we couldn’t leave him alone, and Rufus asked if Grace and I would like to drive into the seaside village of Flinders and call Foxhill at the office – he was waiting there all day for a report – and tell him the Boss was still a little indisposed and Rufus would stay with him here overnight, but he should send a car and driver for the rest of us. Rufus would bring the Boss home to Melbourne the following afternoon.

You’re not staying alone with that maniac, said Dotty.

My dear, no need for you to spend a night here.

I bloody will. If he comes at me with a bloody machete, I’ll shoot the fucker dead.